Important: Please check calendar below for revised biennium dates.

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What is Biennium Close?

Many governmental organizations, including the University of Washington (UW), divide their accounting records into two-year periods. Each two-year period is called a “biennium”. During a biennium revenue and expenses are recorded.

At the conclusion of the biennium the records are closed and a new set of records is opened and a “new” biennium is created. At the UW a biennium begins in July of an odd year and concludes at the end of June two years later.

For a month or so after the day a given biennium ends (which is usually June 30), we continue to record revenues and expenses that pertain to the old biennium in the old biennium. This allows UW to record its financial transactions to the appropriate time period. For a short period of time, two separate sets of records are open, one for the new biennium and one for the old. Biennium crossover is the period of time when the old and new biennias are both open. Biennium close occurs when transactions can no longer be put into the old biennium. There are a series of steps leading up to this cutoff.

What does this mean to the University of Washington?

To comply with Washington State accounting procedures for closing out the current Biennium, the University's books of account will be held open for a limited time during the month of July to record transactions processed after June 30 relating to business of the expiring fiscal period.

The Biennium Cut-Off Datesare the final dates on which various transactions must be received, and or processed, to ensure recording for biennium business.

System Availability

It is important to note that various systems may be unavailable, for the processing of transactions. You can learn more about any planned system downtime, or unavailability on theSystem Availabilitypage.

Things to Know:

Ariba will be unavailable from 6am Sunday 7/9 until 6am Monday 7/10 while biennium crossover activities take place. These biennium crossover activities are:

2015 Biennium budgets will be available in Ariba through Friday, 7/7/2017

2017 Biennium budgets will be available in Ariba on Monday, 7/10/2017

Budgets that expire in the 2015 biennium will be removed from Ariba default budget Preferences. Re-set your Preferences with a new 2017 biennium on 7/10/2017 (training on Ariba Preferences can be found on our Tutorials webpage).

During July 1st-July 7th:

If you are creating a CR, Req or Non-PO with a budget that will continue into the new 2017 biennium, proceed as normal.

If you are creating a CR, Req or Non-PO with a budget that will expire at the end of the 2015 biennium (6/30/2017), we recommend that these be held until July 10th when the new budgets are available to use (budgets that expired on 6/30/17 can no longer be used to make payments, therefore the use of expired budgets on new transactions will delay payment).

In order to ensure expenditures for any major purchases that do not have any existing contracts in place are charged to the expiring biennium, they need to be fully approved by the department and submitted to Central Office by March 31st.

In order to ensure expenditures are charged to the expiring biennium, orders placed in Ariba must have invoices dated June 30th or earlier in Ariba and Blanket Purchase Orders (BPO) must be fully received by the department. This allows for central office processing.

DEAN'S DAY- FINAL DAY to submit expense transfers (only possible for those who have "Biennium Close Transfer(Dean's/VP)"access in ASTRA. Check your authorizations if you are unsure of your access rights.)